Forced to choose between fiscal solvency and Saving the Earth!!! guess what wins:

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Demonstrating just how much concern over the nation's fiscal problems has changed the political climate, ethanol has lost its mojo and now appears vulnerable, with the Senate voting Thursday 73-27 to cut tax subsidies to the industry. ...

The vote was also noteworthy because 33 Republicans joined 38 Democrats and two independents to vote to end the subsidies.

The pledge equates ending a tax break with raising taxes, which the senators who signed the pledge vowed not to do unless they took other steps to reduce taxes.

(Americans for Tax Reform) said it wouldn't hold the tax increases that would come from ending the ethanol subsidies against the Republicans so long as they voted to end the federal mandate requiring the use of ethanol and also voted to end the estate tax.

Steve Nerem, the director of the widely relied-upon research center, told FoxNews.com that his group added the 0.3 millimeters per year to the actual sea level measurements because land masses, still rebounding from the ice age, are rising and increasing the amount of water that oceans can hold.

"We have to account for the fact that the ocean basins are actually getting slightly bigger... water volume is expanding," he said, a phenomenon they call glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA).

... which sounds suspiciously like Global Climate Disruption

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"There really is no reason to do this other than to advance a political agenda," said James M. Taylor, a lawyer who focuses on environmental issues for the Heartland Institute.

Climate scientist John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the amount of water in the ocean and sea level were two different things.

"To me sea level rise is what's measured against the actual coast," he told FoxNews.com. "That's what tells us the impact of rising oceans."

So are sea levels rising, or falling? Compared to what I used to think that was a simple question. As it turns out, even that is more complicated than it appears.

Canadian researcher Steve McIntyre discovered earlier this week that the IPCC’s recent report on alternative energy — which asserted that it was possible to convert the world to 80% green energy by 2050 if politicians would simply tax conventional sources and spend billions on alternative sources — was lifted largely from Greenpeace reports.

The lead author of the IPCC report turns out to be Sven Teske, a Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner, who the IPCC does not identify as such in either the report or its media releases. Mr. Teske is also the author of much of the Greenpeace material on which the IPCC report is based, in effect making him a peer reviewer of the validity of his own material.

Imagine the reaction, for instance, if a government had produced a fossil-fuel friendly report based on work by an oil sands engineer, without revealing the source, and had paid the same engineer to write its own summary of his initial work.

That is what the IPCC has stooped to in this case and it eliminates any credibility the organization had left on the climate file.

I'm not sure if I can be bothered, or have the time more importantly, chasing info for this thread John Galt, but in the meantime I'll offer up this-

Paul Ryans budget, which means austerity for most Americans, turns out to mean prosperity for Ryan and his family.

That budget, which the GOP-led House adopted as its blueprint, slashes funding for everyone from seniors to the disabled to students while preserving $45 billion in tax breaks and subsidies for Big Oil over the next 10 years, as has been widely reported.

But what we have only just learned from Ryans financial disclosure forms for Congress (here) that were made public this week is he and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryans budget plan, as The Daily Beast reported today.

Ryans father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.

These energy giants stand to profit directly from the $45 billion in subsidies and tax breaks. How cozy!

When asked about the blatant conflict of interest, Ryans spokesperson offered up the newly-popular wife defense:

Ryans office says the congressman wasnt thinking about himself or the oil companies that lease his land when he drafted the budget blueprint that extended the energy tax breaks. These are properties that Congressman Ryan married into, spokesman Kevin Seifert said. Its not something he has a lot of control over.

Seriously. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said his wife vetoed his presidential run. Now Ryans office says he has no control over his ethics where family is concerned. Apparently nobody ever explained to him what conflict of interest means.

Sure, senior citizens should have to pay more for health care, but landholders like [Ryan] who lease property to big oil companies, well, their government subsidies must be protected at all costs, says Melanie Sloan, the director of the nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. It smacks of hypocrisy.

In fact, if Ryan had actually cared about the deficit, he would have stripped these subsidies from his budget. Back in 2005, President George W. Bush, a former oilman, explained that the profit potential in the oil industry drives exploration, not the subsidies: With $55 oil we dont need incentives to the oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives. Oil prices are hovering around $100 a barrel today.

So Ryan married into four investments whose asset value is between $265,000 and $650,000. His familys income last year from those investments was between $36,000 and $117,000. Talk about your nest egg.

Presumably he wasnt thinking about those investments when he voted repeatedly this year to protect Big Oil subsidies.

Finally, no doubt it is also just a coincidence that the House Budget Committee Chairman slashed funding for the major competitors to Big Oil, eliminating billions of dollars in investments in clean energy technologies.

Not to forget, but when (sea) water warms up, it *expands*. Water is at its densest at approximately 39ºF, the greater proportion of the ocean's (surface) temperatures are warmer than this value, and are gradually warming. Thermal expansion is one of the main factors in the current and ongoing rises of sea level.

We the public deserve an honest complete review of the facts with scientific interpretation and implications as to what really happened on 9/11. Bill Binney, Former senior technical director, NSA.

I'm a big fan of global warming. If we weren't stewing in our own excrement, we would be headed for a period of glaciation in the next 10,000 years or so.

The Holocene is a death trap. Screw the Holocene, I want the Eocene back - and that is what we will get. 2000 ppm co2 gives you tons of rainfall, tropical jungles over most of the earth, and temperate poles. Best of all, no cyclical ice ages.

So we should figure that out - trying to fight global warming is a waste of time. Every time you conserve energy, it just drives down prices on oil so that the Chinese burn more.

I think that deoxignation is worse than acidification, also - you end up with anaerobic bacteria that excrete poison gas. We waste all our time trying to fight global warming instead of learning how to live with it, which is a bad move imho.

Ethanol has nothing to do with global warming. It is a backdoor farm subsidy, a darling of Republicans, not Liberals. It was a carefully crafted ruse to trick a certain number of the more naive environmentalists into supporting a Republican cause.

Let's end all energy subsidies. Ending the oil subsidy alone will be enough incentive for forward thinking companies to invest in clean energy (not ethanol).

Climate change does not give a flying fuck if you have extreme right wing politics or not.

It's a big deal for you. It's a big deal for right wing Americans and Christian fundamentalists and it does not give a fuck whether we propose austerity measures that favour the very rich.

In about a hundred years, people like you will be remembered as we remember apologists for slavery.

I agree with you MJ. History shows us that those who made claims about the climate, about their ability to control it and how they should dictate the actions of their fellow humans to make sure the climate acted in a certain fashion have obviously been portrayed favorably. Likewise those who took climate and engaged in personification with it have been seen in a positive light as well.

Let me known which animals need to be sacrificed on what altar to appease the climate gods.

Not to forget, but when (sea) water warms up, it *expands*. Water is at its densest at approximately 39ºF, the greater proportion of the ocean's (surface) temperatures are warmer than this value, and are gradually warming. Thermal expansion is one of the main factors in the current and ongoing rises of sea level.

Part of the problem is that according to recent reports, they are adding to sea level measurements intentionally. Why? Because ocean capacity is increasing, meaning sea levels do not actually rise.

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Steve Nerem, the director of the widely relied-upon research center, told FoxNews.com that his group added the 0.3 millimeters per year to the actual sea level measurements because land masses, still rebounding from the ice age, are rising and increasing the amount of water that oceans can hold.

and

Quote:

Climate scientist John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the amount of water in the ocean and sea level were two different things.
"To me… sea level rise is what's measured against the actual coast," he told FoxNews.com. "That's what tells us the impact of rising oceans."
Taylor agreed.
"Many global warming alarmists say that vast stretches of coastline are going to be swallowed up by the sea. Well, that means we should be talking about sea level, not about global water volume."

The problem is that if you really want to know the global climate, it's best to keep a close eye on that really bright burning object 93,000,000 miles away called the Sun.

With increasing solar activity, Earth's magnetosphere and the top of the atmosphere are going to be hit with a lot more solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME's), and those could have way more effect on the weather than any human activity, which could substantially warm up the sea level air temperature a bit--enough to cause weird weather pattern changes.

Anyway, I still think the age of fossil fuels is soon headed for a decline anyway, for one reason: low-altitude air pollution problems generated by gasoline-fueled and diesel-fueled internal combustion engines, along with coal-fired plants that have insufficient exhaust emission controls (a BIG problem in China). With battery technology rapidly advancing, wind turbines and solar panels getting way less expensive, and within the 15 years the arrival of the ultra-safe liquid fluoride thorium nuclear reactor (which are vastly safer than any uranium-based reactor and generate a tiny fraction of the radioactive waste), we could enter the age where all ground transportation are electric powered as early as 2025-2030 time frame.

The problem is that if you really want to know the global climate, it's best to keep a close eye on that really bright burning object 93,000,000 miles away called the Sun.

With increasing solar activity, Earth's magnetosphere and the top of the atmosphere are going to be hit with a lot more solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME's), and those could have way more effect on the weather than any human activity, which could substantially warm up the sea level air temperature a bit--enough to cause weird weather pattern changes.

And if I go to the beach, much more garbage is there, washed up from boats offshore dumping waste than what may be there through my own actions, so I guess it's okay to leave my wrappers and cans.

Quote:

Anyway, I still think the age of fossil fuels is soon headed for a decline anyway, for one reason: low-altitude air pollution problems generated by gasoline-fueled and diesel-fueled internal combustion engines, along with coal-fired plants that have insufficient exhaust emission controls (a BIG problem in China). With battery technology rapidly advancing, wind turbines and solar panels getting way less expensive, and within the 15 years the arrival of the ultra-safe liquid fluoride thorium nuclear reactor (which are vastly safer than any uranium-based reactor and generate a tiny fraction of the radioactive waste), we could enter the age where all ground transportation are electric powered as early as 2025-2030 time frame.

"Current world end-use power demand for all purposes: 12.5 TW
World power demand in 2030 with current infrastructure: 16.9 TW
End-use power demand in 2030 with WWS (wind, water,& sun + electricity/H2 (hydrogen)): 11.5 TW (30% lower than 16.9 TW)
~ http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/0...2/#more-246665

Here in the UK energy is a bit like healthcare. The right (currently in power) are a long way short of the left on making progress, but like healthcare, they do accept the need for a national health service, ie they don't deny GW, indeed they are actually setting high targets for reducing CO2.

The democrats in the US are a long way behind the UK's right. America's targets on clean energy are truly awful.

I know you've said in other posts that you support solar etc, so why don't you support more action being taken to support them?

Basically, you can't have your cake and eat it. If you want solar to compete against coal you have to account financially for the fact that coal is far more polluting than solar and that that has costs.

"Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog"~ Sir Winston Churchill. We are nurturing a nightmare that will haunt our children, and kill theirs.

That's the bad idea. Giving up and accelerating global climate change isn't going to help things. Effort has to be made on both fronts: slowing or stopping it and potentially living with it.

Trying to stop global warming is a total waste of time, I'm saying that you could not slow or stop it if you wanted to, no matter what you did (short of a one world authoritarian government). Show mathematically how you think you can stop global warming, I think that economic feedback loops make it impossible.

Trying to stop global warming is a total waste of time, I'm saying that you could not slow or stop it if you wanted to, no matter what you did (short of a one world authoritarian government). Show mathematically how you think you can stop global warming, I think that economic feedback loops make it impossible.

Truly the only solution is something that cost less and is easier to deploy than burning fossil fuels. I'm not holding my breath.

This is more than just arguments leading to a wrong conclusion. The premises aren't even related to the conclusion, so a "not even wrong" argument is often an extreme non sequitur. Usually this is because of a lack of understanding in the person making the argument. They don't know enough about the subject to know what premises are needed to form the right argument and probably are completely unaware of that fact, similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” -Sagan

Well, we certainly shouldn't try to accelerate it by giving up and saying screw trying to lower emissions. Tell me how that is going to help.

I'm saying that it will make absolutely no difference - if you stop trying to fight global warming nothing will happen at all. No differences, unless it is something subtle that you can see on a complex mathematical model - we burn (or turn into plastic) every ounce of oil that we can get, the only thing conservation does is to pick which country burns it.

"Just 10 days ahead of international leaders convening in Cancun, Mexico for the UN climate change conference, British economist Nicholas Stern warned Friday that the U.S. could face a boycott on its products from other countries if it doesn't adequately reduce carbon emissions, AFP reports.

"Just 10 days ahead of international leaders convening in Cancun, Mexico for the UN climate change conference, British economist Nicholas Stern warned Friday that the U.S. could face a boycott on its products from other countries if it doesn't adequately reduce carbon emissions, AFP reports.

What products?

About the only thing the US exports any more is its increasingly worthless currency.

"A new study in Science finds that sea level rise from a collapse of the WAIS would likely be 25% higher for North America than previously estimated:

The catastrophic increase in sea level, already projected to average between 16 and 17 feet around the world, would be almost 21 feet in such places as Washington, D.C., scientists say, putting it largely underwater.

Many coastal areas would be devastated. Much of Southern Florida would disappear.
The typical estimate of the sea-level change is five metres, a value arrived at by taking the total volume of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, converting it to water and spreading it evenly across the oceans. However, this estimate is far too simplified because it ignores three significant effects:

When an ice sheet melts, its gravitational pull on the ocean is reduced and water moves away from it. The net effect is that the sea level actually falls within 2,000 km of a melting ice sheet, and rises progressively further away from it. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses, sea level will fall close to the Antarctic and will rise much more than the expected estimate in the northern hemisphere because of this gravitational effect;

The depression in the Antarctic bedrock that currently sits under the weight of the ice sheet will become filled with water if the ice sheet collapses. However, the size of this hole will shrink as the region rebounds after the ice disappears, pushing some of the water out into the ocean, and this effect will further contribute to the sea-level rise;

The melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will actually cause the Earth’s rotation axis to shift rather dramatically — approximately 500 metres from its present position if the entire ice sheet melts. This shift will move water from the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans northward toward North America and into the southern Indian Ocean."
~ http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/0...for-us-coasts/

"Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog"~ Sir Winston Churchill. We are nurturing a nightmare that will haunt our children, and kill theirs.

The catastrophic increase in sea level, already projected to average between 16 and 17 feet around the world, would be almost 21 feet in such places as Washington, D.C., scientists say, putting it largely underwater.

About the only thing the US exports any more is its increasingly worthless currency.

Do you have numbers?

It's an oversimplification but not far from the truth.

The problem with "stimulus" and "quantitative easing" that all the economic gurus said would fix everything is that it had the long-term effect of driving up commodity prices, the most significant of which is oil and everything that needs it - in particular, food production and distribution.

What's worse is that this effect has benefitted "the rich" at the expense of "the poor". Fed Chairman Bernanke seemed genuinely clueless about this during his press conference yesterday:

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Mr. Bernanke was attempting to promote what economists call "wealth effects," or an increase in spending that accompanies an increase in perceived wealth. Watching their assets rise in value, the argument goes, Americans will consume and invest more. ...

So how's that going for you?

Pay attention now:

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... The Fed can create new dollars, but it can't determine where those dollars will flow in a global economy that still runs mostly on a dollar standard. And with QE2 piling on near-zero rates, dollars flooded into assets other than stocks. In particular, they flowed into emerging markets like China and Brazil and into commodities nearly across the board.

One result has been a sharp increase in food and energy prices that took gasoline up to $4 a gallon. These have produced what economists call "income effects," or a change in consumption resulting from a change in real income. People who pay $4 for gasoline, or $30 more for groceries, have less money to spend on other goods.

Food and energy costs act as a highly regressive tax.

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One big difference is who feels these effects. The wealth effects have helped everyone but especially the affluent. The income effects have been felt most acutely by the poor and middle classes for whom food and energy are a much higher proportion of income. QE2 and near-zero interest rates have been a boon for bankers and hedge funds. They haven't been so great for suburban families who commute to work and haul their kids to football and music practice.

Are you paying attention?

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The monetary policy so favored by liberal economists and the White House has actively favored the wealthy over the middle class.

How can this be? The most liberal Administration in recent memory, with the most educated advocates of a centrally planned economy in charge... and guess who benefits?

Take that defenders of the downtrodden and enemies of "the rich".

What's needed ought to be clear to any sentient being, and I've been beating that drum for years: Employment. Get government out of the way of those who create jobs, opportunity, income, prosperity and the soaring tax revenue that results every time it's tried:

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The real wellsprings of prosperity are private investment and innovation, which Washington has done so much to retard with regulation, the political allocation of capital, and promises of higher taxes. Reversing those policies would unleash a genuine wealth effect.

Why is this not obvious? Why is it necessary to even print it in the WSJ? The only conclusion is that there is a dearth of sentient beings in Washington. As I said before, the Fed can print all the money it wants, but it can't print jobs.

It wasn't long ago that the Obama Administration was trying to drive up the price of fossil fuels to reduce carbon emissions, promote "green jobs" and save the planet from global warming. Gasoline at $3.50 or $4 a gallon has ended that.

The price is up - mission accomplished! So, they decide to release some of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve...?

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The White House says it is taking this action because of "supply disruptions" in Libya and other countries which pose a threat to global economic recovery.

Oh! You mean the "kinetic action"? The one that would last "days, not weeks" and is now, oh... four months old?

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One irony is that a million barrels a day is about how much oil experts believe we could be producing from the vast oil fields in Alaska's wildlife reserve. President Obama has said that tapping Alaska wouldn't affect oil prices but now says a temporary spurt will do so. How about opening up Alaska, and dropping the de facto Gulf moratorium too?

"Globally, emissions from transportation continue a relentless rise, with half of them coming from personal cars. Yet an important impulse behind Europes traffic reforms will be familiar to mayors in Los Angeles and Vienna alike: to make cities more inviting, with cleaner air and less traffic.

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of environmental zones where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.

Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into walkers paradises, said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.

In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving, said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.

To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the citys ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt."
~ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/sc...c.html?_r=1&hp

"Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog"~ Sir Winston Churchill. We are nurturing a nightmare that will haunt our children, and kill theirs.

The Old Grey Lady herself decries the egregious and ill-advised waste of government-mandated and subsidized ethanol production:

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In its myriad corn-related interventions, Washington has managed simultaneously to help drive up food prices and add tens of billions of dollars to the deficit, while arguably increasing energy use and harming the environment.

Even in a crowd of rising food and commodity costs, corn stands out, its price having doubled in less than a year to a record $7.87 per bushel in early June. Booming global demand has overtaken stagnant supply. ... But rather than ameliorate the problem, the government has exacerbated it, reducing food supply to a hungry world.

Good job Washington. Increase the cost of the one US export the world actually needs. As I wrote earlier, food is for eating. Fuel is for burning.

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Nor does ethanol live up to its environmental promises. The Congressional Budget Office found that reducing carbon dioxide emissions by using ethanol costs at least $750 per ton of carbon dioxide, wildly more than other methods. What is more, making corn ethanol consumes vast quantities of water and increases smog.